Toptal
The World's Top Talent, On Demand®
Delivery Manager
Location
United States
Posted
59 days ago
Salary
Not specified
Bachelor Degree7 yrs expEnglish
Job Description
• Own the end-to-end delivery lifecycle to ensure consistent client satisfaction and revenue retention.
• Own end-to-end delivery execution for assigned projects and managed services, from kickoff through closure or transition to steady state, ensuring scope, schedule, and quality commitments are met.
• Build and maintain detailed delivery plans, milestones, and work breakdown structures, proactively managing risks, issues, and dependencies across distributed teams.
• Enforce standardized delivery methodologies, SLAs, and best practices defined by the Delivery Director and Practices, ensuring consistent execution across all engagements.
• Run recurring delivery ceremonies (stand-ups, sprint reviews, status calls, service reviews) and drive clear action ownership and follow-through.
• Monitor delivery KPIs (defects, rework, SLA adherence, CSAT, incident trends) and implement corrective actions and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Serve as the primary day-to-day delivery contact for client stakeholders for assigned engagements, fostering trusted relationships through clear, proactive communication.
• Prepare and lead regular client status and service review meetings, providing concise views of progress, risks, issues, financials, and improvement actions.
• Manage expectations and escalations in partnership with Delivery Directors and Account/Sales counterparts, ensuring transparent handling of challenges and trade-offs.
• Capture client feedback and translate it into concrete delivery improvements and opportunities for expanded value.
• Manage engagement-level financials within portfolio guardrails, including revenue realization, margin performance, and accurate forecasting for assigned projects and services.
• Track effort, burn, and utilization against plan; proactively adjust staffing, scope, and delivery approach to protect margins while maintaining quality.
• Ensure proper scope control and change management, identifying out-of-scope work and partnering with Sales and Delivery Directors to structure change orders.
• Support accurate and timely billing by validating deliverable sign-offs, timesheets, and milestone completions.
• Apply AI-enabled tools and automation (e.g., for planning, estimation, testing, monitoring, reporting) in daily execution, following standards and guardrails set by Delivery Directors and AI/Operations teams.
• Use data and analytics to inform delivery decisions, including forecasting, capacity planning, and early risk identification.
• Champion adoption of standardized playbooks, templates, and tooling to reduce variability, improve productivity, and enhance client outcomes.
• Provide feedback on AI-enabled and standardized processes to help refine and improve delivery practices over time.
• Coordinate and lead cross-functional teams (talent placement, consultants, engineers, SMEs) across multiple time zones to deliver against commitments.
• Provide day-to-day direction, prioritization, and coaching to team members, creating clarity on goals, roles, and expectations.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement through retrospectives and data-driven learning.
• Partner with Sales, Presales, and Delivery Directors to provide delivery inputs to proposals, SOWs, and account plans, ensuring commitments are realistic and executable.
• Contribute to solution design with practical delivery approaches, plans, estimates, and risk assessments for new and expanding engagements.
• Participate in select client pre-sales discussions to represent delivery feasibility, delivery model options (project vs managed services), and implementation considerations.
• Monitor on-time delivery and milestone adherence for assigned engagements.
Job Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree is required.
- 7–10+ years of experience in Professional Services delivery, consulting, or related roles.
- 3–5+ years managing projects or services for multiple clients or workstreams, ideally in a global or distributed delivery environment.
- Proven track record delivering complex technology or professional services engagements with strong client satisfaction and predictable outcomes.
- Solid understanding of both project-based and managed services delivery models, including governance and SLAs.
- Hands-on experience with project/engagement financials (forecasting, revenue recognition basics, margin drivers, utilization, change control).
- Experience working with or implementing technology- and automation-led improvements in delivery; exposure to AI-enabled tools is a strong plus.
- Strong understanding of Professional Services fundamentals (SOWs, deliverables, risk management, change management, and commercial models).
- Excellent client-facing communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to simplify complex delivery topics.
- Detail-oriented, data-driven, and outcome-focused, with strong problem-solving and decision-making skills.
- Collaborative, empathetic team player who builds trust while driving accountability and clear ownership.
- Comfortable working through change and ambiguity while maintaining composure and client confidence.
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, rapidly growing company and handle a wide variety of challenges, deadlines, and a diverse array of contacts.
- You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.
Benefits
- Participation in a 401(k) retirement plan
- Medical, dental, and vision health insurance plans
- Basic life insurance coverage
- Short-term and long-term disability coverage
- Access to flexible spending, dependent care, and health savings accounts
- Access to telehealth virtual doctors
- An employee assistance program
- Flexible paid time off